Office Party

Daniels had grown up in New York, the son of a television executive. Though he has vivid memories of newspaper ads for Mount Airy Lodge in the Poconos, he doesn’t recall ever setting foot in Scranton. He does remember seeing Valentine’s Day cards marked “Made in Scranton” on the back.

“Scranton just seems like a real place to me,” he says. The very sound of the name appealed to him, with its hard consonants. As a native son of the city, I could report to Mr. Daniels that there has long been a cynical twisting of those hard consonants by disgruntled residents who call their town “Scrotum.” That authentic detail hasn’t made it onto the show.

Now that The Office is well into its third season, there’s plenty of evidence that Daniels didn’t lie to the Times-Tribune reporter. The depiction of the city has been gently teasing at its worst, as when the clueless boss played by Steve Carell wants to treat his staff to a rail-car plunge into the damp recesses of an actual coal mine (something you can do at the nearby Lackawanna County Coal Mine Tour), thinking it will be like an amusement-park ride. The Office writers sometimes send up the small-town parochialism of Carell’s Michael Scott. Embarking on a trip to Dunder-Mifflin headquarters in New York, he packs a passport and, though claiming to be an old New York hand, gets lost constantly. Bragging to the always unseen documentary crew that gives a frame to the show’s narrative structure, Michael Scott assures them he knows where to go for great, authentic New York pizza. Then he strides into Sbarro.

But even a wary Scrantonian can overlook that stuff. “It’s worked out tremendous,” says Mayor Doherty. “They’re very respectful of the city. We’re just the backdrop for this goofy sitcom where everybody’s a little weird, and that’s what makes it so funny.”

The Office premiered in the early spring of 2005 and ran for only six episodes that season. Scranton references were few and brief. But when it returned the next season for a full 22-episode run, there were so many nods to its location that it became a great game with fans to spot the Scrantonisms. Most were tiny: real coffee mugs and plaques on the show’s set; a Froggy 101 radio station bumper sticker pasted near Dwight’s desk; an Abe’s Deli menu stuck to the lunchroom refrigerator. Names of actual Scranton restaurants were constantly dropped into the scripts. After a local hoagie shop was featured delivering to Dunder-­Mifflin, the owners hung a huge banner on their store: EAT WHERE THE OFFICE EATS.

During that second season, which would win the show an Emmy for best comedy and see the ratings climb to a solid nine million viewers per episode, Mari Potis practically had a second full-time job wrangling props for the show. She found herself photographing sheriff’s deputies’ uniforms to help properly outfit Dwight, who’s a volunteer sheriff. Potis snapped shots of local firemen for a scene in which Dunder-Mifflin goes through a smoky evacuation. She packed off cases of locally produced Crystal Club soda to fill the vending machine on the set.